I am a major pickle fiend - even before being pregnant - I loved pickles.  You name it, my mom’s mustard pickles, 7-day pickles, gherkins, dill pickles, pickled asparagus….  things just taste better in a pickle-ly brine.  When I was grocery shopping the other day and happened upon Ontario tomatoes at our local grocer (seriously, miracle!) flashes of pickled tomatoes danced in my head.  Best of all, they were green tomatoes!  I think buying five pounds of unripe tomatoes confused the cashier, but that didn’t matter - I was hell bent on making pickles.

The next day, I returned to the grocery store for the rest of the canning supplies: jars, labels and a canning kit which included tongs, a funnel, and a magnetic stick to get the lids out of hot water.

Here’s the scene:

(Note: I really didn’t need to buy so much salt.  What am I going to do with this ridiculously huge bag of salt??)

Then I washed all the jars and lids in hot soapy water and popped them in hot water to sterilize them.  The instructions say to heat them at 180 degrees for 10 minutes.

Then, after all the tomatoes were sliced into large chunks - I simmered them in the pickle mixture for 10 minutes.  I based my version on this recipe, but ended up making a few substitutions.

Then, it was time to fill up the jars.  I was a little worried that the canning kit would be a bit of a waste of money, but I completely recommend buying one now.  The tools made it very easy for this newbie to deal with hot jars, lids and pouring (I can be a bit splashy).

And the end result from about five pounds of (mostly) green tomatoes: 5 x 500ml jars of tomato pickles!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
• 2 cups sugar (I used about 1 3/4 white, 1/4 brown sugar)
• 1 tbsp. mustard seed
• 1 tbsp. celery seed
• 2-ish? tbsp. pickling spice
• 1 tbsp. pickling salt
• 5 lbs. green tomatoes, washed, cored
• I omitted the onion as I couldn’t be bothered cutting it up.  I figured I had done enough work by this point!